Ran an 8-man draft earlier tonight, decided to try a few new things out. First, I used a different method of creating packs from normal to even out the color distribution a bit more. I saw this posted on Reddit a few days ago and it worked out pretty well for us tonight, probably my go-to for all future drafts:
1) Divide everything by color (WUBRG), with lands, colorless, and gold in a sixth pile.
2) Take 20% of each color and shuffle it into the gold/colorless/land pile.
3) Distribute the mixed pile evenly into each colored pile, and shuffle those.
4) Take three cards from each pile to make your packs.
Distribution of colors was pretty even, no packs this time where it was like 8 red cards, no white cards, etc. This is much more time consuming but seems to definitely be worth it. Also makes it easy for me to sort through cube in spare time when I'm making changes.
Next, we had only 7 people able to stay for the entire thing, so we just created two teams of people alternating with me and the guy who had to dip as the 4th members on each team. Then we just went round-robin until people were tired/hungry so not everyone got to play a complete 4 matches. Some people used the leftover draft deck (It was Worldknit) in some matches.
My team ended up with both the 3-0 decks of the night, both of them were really solid based on what I saw:
And a few of the other decks that were interesting included:
After plugging in the Mesmeric Orb and Lab Maniac last night, I was really excited after drafting the deck. I had actually P1P1'd Jace, Vryn's Prodigy ahead of JTMS to see if I would be able to push some reanimator deck with the new additions. I ended up with just Aetherling as a target and Exhume to bring it back early. I only got to play two matches because of our uneven number of players after the draft, but I had a blast with the deck. I had Aetherling as my initial win-con for UB control, but once I saw the Maniac late after drafting a lot of draw effects, I figured that it was worth a shot. I saw the Orb midway through that 3rd pack and I was sold. It was so much fun trying to figure out how to self-mill myself for the win and trying to navigate through my opponents on-board threats in the meantime. I won one game through careful play through the orb (leaving some lands untapped to avoid mill kill) before dropping Lab Maniac and using Compulsive Research for the win over a single turn. This was in the face of an Avenger of Zendikar who had just created an army that would kill me with another swing. I had to chump it by flashing in Snapcaster Mage while flashing back a Frantic Search to put me within self-mill range for the win. The other game, I had to bide my time with board wipes and counter spells until I reached a point where I could resolve and protect Aetherling before closing it out the following turn with an unblockable swing for 8.
In my 2nd match, I played against the Mardu Sacggro deck I posted earlier which quickly went to three games. I won the first game again through the self-mill combo, this time with Ob Nixilis Reignited being an amazing way to refill the hand, push me closer to the end of my deck, and controlling the board by killing off particularly annoying creatures. I lost the 2nd game to just a strong aggro curve while I fell behind with my early plays being answered one-for-one. Game 3 was going to go either way until I resolved a Mesmeric Orb after he had tapped out for 4 on his previous turn. He had a board with Brutal Hordechief (which he tapped out for) and a Young Pyromancer. All of a sudden he untapped and milled himself a Lingering Souls and Blood Artist into the graveyard, used Unearth to bring back the Artist, then flashbacked souls. I go from a manageable board to suddenly one where he has 7 bodies and a ton of reach. I couldn't draw into the 2nd black for my Damnation in hand so I was forced to used a Toxic Deluge paying 3 life to clear the board. With my two other creatures I end up being drained for 9. He finishes me off two turns later off a Rolling Earthquake for 5.
Loved the deck, check it out under the spoiler tag, and I urge everyone to run both Laboratory Maniac and Mesmeric Orb. Fantastic cards, would have completely overlooked the Orb if it weren't for Raveborn's post a while back. I can see both of these cards staying in my cube for the foreseeable future. Now for some other quick hits from other games:
1) Divide everything by color (WUBRG), with lands, colorless, and gold in a sixth pile.
2) Take 20% of each color and shuffle it into the gold/colorless/land pile.
3) Distribute the mixed pile evenly into each colored pile, and shuffle those.
4) Take three cards from each pile to make your packs.
Distribution of colors was pretty even, no packs this time where it was like 8 red cards, no white cards, etc. This is much more time consuming but seems to definitely be worth it. Also makes it easy for me to sort through cube in spare time when I'm making changes.
Next, we had only 7 people able to stay for the entire thing, so we just created two teams of people alternating with me and the guy who had to dip as the 4th members on each team. Then we just went round-robin until people were tired/hungry so not everyone got to play a complete 4 matches. Some people used the leftover draft deck (It was Worldknit) in some matches.
My team ended up with both the 3-0 decks of the night, both of them were really solid based on what I saw:
Sultai
Naya Bellower
And a few of the other decks that were interesting included:
UB Maniac Mill (Me!)
Mardu Tokens Sacggro
Jeskai Life Matters
After plugging in the Mesmeric Orb and Lab Maniac last night, I was really excited after drafting the deck. I had actually P1P1'd Jace, Vryn's Prodigy ahead of JTMS to see if I would be able to push some reanimator deck with the new additions. I ended up with just Aetherling as a target and Exhume to bring it back early. I only got to play two matches because of our uneven number of players after the draft, but I had a blast with the deck. I had Aetherling as my initial win-con for UB control, but once I saw the Maniac late after drafting a lot of draw effects, I figured that it was worth a shot. I saw the Orb midway through that 3rd pack and I was sold. It was so much fun trying to figure out how to self-mill myself for the win and trying to navigate through my opponents on-board threats in the meantime. I won one game through careful play through the orb (leaving some lands untapped to avoid mill kill) before dropping Lab Maniac and using Compulsive Research for the win over a single turn. This was in the face of an Avenger of Zendikar who had just created an army that would kill me with another swing. I had to chump it by flashing in Snapcaster Mage while flashing back a Frantic Search to put me within self-mill range for the win. The other game, I had to bide my time with board wipes and counter spells until I reached a point where I could resolve and protect Aetherling before closing it out the following turn with an unblockable swing for 8.
In my 2nd match, I played against the Mardu Sacggro deck I posted earlier which quickly went to three games. I won the first game again through the self-mill combo, this time with Ob Nixilis Reignited being an amazing way to refill the hand, push me closer to the end of my deck, and controlling the board by killing off particularly annoying creatures. I lost the 2nd game to just a strong aggro curve while I fell behind with my early plays being answered one-for-one. Game 3 was going to go either way until I resolved a Mesmeric Orb after he had tapped out for 4 on his previous turn. He had a board with Brutal Hordechief (which he tapped out for) and a Young Pyromancer. All of a sudden he untapped and milled himself a Lingering Souls and Blood Artist into the graveyard, used Unearth to bring back the Artist, then flashbacked souls. I go from a manageable board to suddenly one where he has 7 bodies and a ton of reach. I couldn't draw into the 2nd black for my Damnation in hand so I was forced to used a Toxic Deluge paying 3 life to clear the board. With my two other creatures I end up being drained for 9. He finishes me off two turns later off a Rolling Earthquake for 5.
Loved the deck, check it out under the spoiler tag, and I urge everyone to run both Laboratory Maniac and Mesmeric Orb. Fantastic cards, would have completely overlooked the Orb if it weren't for Raveborn's post a while back. I can see both of these cards staying in my cube for the foreseeable future. Now for some other quick hits from other games:
- The Sultai player resolved Wretched Confluence once and said that it was one of his overperformers of the night. He said that the card was excellent that one time and would have been great throughout all of his matches. A ton of utility with this one, I urge you all to cube it.
- Sultai also pulled off the combo of Sylvan Safekeeper + Titania which was straight up nasty in a match against the Mardu Sacggro deck. He had to sac all of his lands to create enough blockers to survive at 1 and then crack back for lethal.
- I saw Meren buy back a card once and it immediately became a must-kill threat for the other player. There weren't many ways to abuse it and accumulate Experience counters (he told me that he never got a single one through his games) with the deck, but it was still just fine as a Raise Dead effect. Love how it played, excited to see it put to full use in a dedicated shell in the future.
- Woodland Bellower continues to be a solid card, I'm pretty happy with how it has performed to this point. I think you need 3-4 good targets for it to be entirely worth playing however. Still, it's pretty disgusting tutoring up a Knight of the Reliquary and suddenly having 9+ power on board, especially if you had any ramp at all.
- I was thinking about cutting Ajani's Pridemate but I think I might just have enough incidental lifegain spread throughout the cube at this point for it to be worth playing if a deck with a lifegain theme pops up in a draft. Sometimes it's a dorky 2/2, other times it's a synergy driven clock that people can't race. Seems like it's going to survive past my next few updates as we get new sets.
- Jeskai Life deck pulled off Soulfire + Blasphemous Act against an aggro deck after he had been punched down to like 3 life and that guy had flooded the board + flipped his Kytheon into a Gideon. Played right into the Act which gained 52 life. And then that was followed up by Venser, Shaper Savant bouncing the walker back to hand. It was amazing, the definition of living the dream.
- I think Ob Nixilis Reignited is just a fantastic card for many of our cubes. I had originally held back on adding him because I wanted to trim down on walkers, but after cutting down on others across my cube, I found that I could run him with no issues. I also like having XCC costs for cards higher up the curve to promote better building of mana bases and prioritization of fixing in draft and that's working out well. I think all but two of my current walkers are at XCC cost (aside from gold walkers) Ob Nix is not oppressive, he creates card advantage for you, and he's the perfect card for a control deck with black. He does a ton of work and was especially awesome for me in helping to get my deck low enough to Lab Maniac kill with a draw 3 spell. It was so sweet. I envision that he's going to remain in this cube for a long time to come.